


Small

by Lyndsaybones



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 23:29:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10476969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyndsaybones/pseuds/Lyndsaybones
Summary: A post-Existence flufflet.





	

“He’s so small. I didn’t think he’d be this small,” he said as he assessed the scant weight of the baby in the crook of his arm.

Scully’s bedroom smelled like baby lotion and Dreft detergent. It was intoxicating.

“Why not?” she asked as she gingerly lowered herself onto the edge of her bed, a little wince escaping as she made contact.

“Well you were so…” he realized immediately the folly of where he was going with that thought and clamped his mouth shut. Too late though. The way she set her jaw and narrowed her eyes said it all.

“I was so what?”

He looked down at the baby, with his ruddy Irish complexion and squishy face and thought that perhaps two days old was a bit too young for a lesson in tap dancing. Her bullshit detector was a finely honed instrument so there’s no point in trying.

“Scully, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” he conceded.

She snorted softly and a little chuckle followed. He let a breathy, relieved laugh escape, trying not to startle the baby.

“Ya got me,” he sighed.

“You think I didn’t realize I was huge?” she said with a little grin. “I thought that kid was going to weigh ten pounds.”

“Seven pounds and change seems like plenty.”

She grimaced softly and nodded. “Definitely plenty.”

“Did you take your pill?” he asked, tipping his chin at the orange prescription bottle on the night stand.

“They knock me out,” she sighed.

“You could use the rest,” he said as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“That’s not rest, it’s unconsciousness.”

“Potato, potahto,” he replied.

“He’s going to be hungry soon,” she reasoned.

“Or he could sleep for the next three hours you’ll have stayed awake and in pain for nothing.”

She looked longingly at the baby and then nervously at Mulder.

“You can’t hog him all the time, Scully. We gotta bond, do guy stuff.”

She eyed him suspiciously as she opened the pill bottle.

“Guy stuff? Like what?”

“Well, we’re going to discuss the basics of throwing a baseball, for starters.”

She laughed softly, a sweet sound like twinkling lights. The baby stirred and settled in the same breath, clucking his little jaw in his sleep.

“Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll get to all the good stuff later. I bet you’re a natural sidearm,” he said as he jostled back and forth.

“How can you possibly tell that?”

“Because his dad is,” he reasoned.

“Skinner’s a sidearm?” she asked as she tossed back the pill followed by a long draw from her water bottle. She grinned impishly and averted her eyes as she stifled a giggle.

“Very funny,” he sighed. “Mommy thinks she’s funny,” he told the baby. The baby was indifferent.

“Daddy must be blind if he can’t recognize his own nose,” she replied as she slowly shifted under the blankets.

Daddy.

That thought bloomed in his chest and warmed him from the center out. What a thing she’d done for him. What a fantastically lucky bastard he was.

He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Rest awhile. I’ll wake you if he gets hungry.”

“Kay,” she sighed sleepily.

He pulled the door closed behind him and dance walked into the living room.

“I’ve got something for you, little man,” he whispered.

He fumbled one handed with the plastic bag on the coffee table and produced a tiny Yankees cap. He thought, when he spotted it in the store, that it impossibly small. When he placed it on the boy’s head, however, the baby’s face all but disappeared under the brim. The brushed navy cotton was soft under his fingertips. Not nearly as soft as his son’s skin.

“See, I didn’t think you’d be so little.”


End file.
